Written by

Bob Jordan
| @bobjordanAPP

Route 46 in Parsippany has a dense stretch of supermarkets and restaurants, but those places are too far for some apartment dwellers without cars and families in residential neighborhoods, where options for processed foods at convenience stores are plentiful.

The town is on a list of New Jersey's 134 food deserts, based on a U.S. Department of Agriculture study of poverty rates and supermarket locations in census tracts.

Legislation has been considered in Trenton to provide up to $22 million in state money over five years to spur supermarket growth in low-income pockets of big cities, but ...